


velleities and carefully caught regrets

by 222Ravens



Series: The Un-Deleted Fragments [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Post-Reichenbach, TS Eliot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-05
Updated: 2012-12-05
Packaged: 2017-11-20 10:23:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/584348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/222Ravens/pseuds/222Ravens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which John remembers a quiet afternoon, and finds a potentially misplaced book.</p>
            </blockquote>





	velleities and carefully caught regrets

**Author's Note:**

> With apologies to TS Eliot. 
> 
> I read the poem mentioned here the other day and it gave me random Johnlock feels that refused to go away.
> 
> Then I looked at the title of the poem, and the fic demanded that it be written.
> 
> I don't own anything, obviously, especially not the italicized text, which is TS Eliot's alone, and I wouldn't begin to presume ownership over his gorgeous words.
> 
> Un-beta'd, un-brit picked.
> 
> Intended as gen, but probably written with slash goggles anyway, so feel free to use yours.

  _noun_ ( _plural_ ** _cameos_** )

  * **1** a piece of jewelry, typically oval in shape, consisting of a _portrait_ in profile carved in relief on a background of a different color.



 

It was a quiet day in Baker Street, sometime between the Baskerville case and Moriarity's reappearance, though the exact date escaped John.

 

He had been sitting in the chair with the much-abused Union Jack pillow, reading a medical journal with only half his attention. It was a day free from clinic duty, and then day after a case had finished, meaning Sherlock was satisfied enough to not be bored, but also that they had a day to do nothing, which John rather appreciated.

 

Sherlock had been playing the violin, a slow, sad sort of a composition, and John found it increasingly hard to pay any attention to the medical journal, and eventually put it down in favour of simply listening. 

 

John was no classical music expert, but it was obvious that Sherlock could play fabulously well, when he wanted to, and the violin was some kind of antique, which meant it was probably an extremely good instrument. 

 

Soon, Sherlock finished, pausing in his playing to adjust the tuning, and John remarked, "That was lovely."

 

Sherlock quirked a brow. "Was it? I suppose."

 

A rustle of pages preceded John's reopening of the medical journal. "Yes. Quite nice. What was it?"

 

"Chopin. For piano, actually, but I modified it. Obviously."

 

"Ah. Right." John found his place in the journal, and half-waited for Sherlock to start playing again. 

 

Sherlock didn't, at first, tuning carefully instead, eyes lidded with concentration, before he mumbled something. 

 

" _So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul_

 

| 

   
  
---|---  
  
_Should be resurrected only among friends_

| 

   
  
_Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom_

| 

   
  
_That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room._ ”  
  
 

"So, you delete the solar system, but poetry gets by, does it?"

 

"It was relevant for a case. The poem. Part of a…" Sherlock trails off. "I think it's in a book on the shelf over there. But yes, thank you for the reminder. I'll be deleting it now."

 

"Why"

 

"Well, it's hardly… It's irrelevant, now, really…" Sherlock returns to playing, something of a different sort of tone, and John is fairly certain it's a different composer this time.

 

So the doctor shrugs, and returns to his reading, until some time a long while later, when one of them is dead, and the other is staring blankly at the cheap bookshelf in his godawful flat. 

~

 

He's read all the books on it before, and there's not a lot else to do in the evenings, now. John has already checked, there's absolutely not even the slightest thing on the telly. He's not quite desperate enough to go out to a bar on a Tuesday night, not with clinic duty tomorrow. He needs that job, the one thing he still has to do, some tiny semblance of _normal,_ no matter how hateful it is.

 

So he sits in a somewhat oppressive silence, sipping his tea, running his gaze along the spines of the book. Until he spots something. Something that makes his hands go steady, his eyes widen, and his chest clench with impossible, ridiculous hope.

 

Because he's quite wrong. He _hasn't_ read all of the books on the shelf. There's a completely new one on the shelf. One that he never put there, and this time, unlike several other false alarms…. Of that he is _quite_ sure of.

 

He forces himself to breathe calmly, and looks away, turns the television on, and watches something without thinking about it or even noticing what it is.

 

John isn't an idiot. He's full aware that there could well be surveillance on his flat, and if he is right ( _and oh god, how he hopes he is)_ ,or if Moriarity is still out there, because Mycroft assured him that he wasn't, but how sure was Mycroft, how sure was he? Even the smallest shred of Moriarity's web…. 

 

_Is that why..._

 

He needed to be careful, so very careful, or…

 

 It didn't bear thinking about, not now.

 

So he turns television off after about an hour, idly gets up, limping still just a little bit. Picking up the book, it goes in his bag, then he goes to bed.

 

It's normal enough, he sometimes brings a book with him to work, for his breaks, nothing to draw attention.

 

He wakes up the next morning, goes through his usual routine, and forces himself through his shift, trying desperately not to drift off in his concentration, or worse, to do something utterly foolish like smile.

 

He goes to the park next, the park he met Mike Stamford in, the park where it all began. Whether he's right or not, it's a fitting place, and he's fairly certain he isn't followed there.

 

Pulling the book out of his bag, he looks at it. 

 

 _Modern Poetry_.

 

Modern Poetry? It's such a bizarre choice that John is certain that he must be wrong, yet he's never seen the book before, and it appeared on his shelf. That has to mean something.

 

It's an old copy, what looks like a battered student's English textbook, with marks where pages were dog eared and stained with coffee.

 

He begins to flip through it, looking at every page, every poem. It's alphabetical by author, and he stops suddenly in the E's.

 

The title of one of the poems is underlined with a pencil, some numbers and letters scribbled in the margin, and he almost ignores it. 

 

It's a well used book, that sort of thing is normal, there are underlined bits in the rest of the book as well, but he forces himself to notice everything about it. Pen, the rest of the underlining is in pen. 

 

This is pencil, different, and this is the only poem where there's any other writing on it.

 

John looks at the title of the poem, and the author.TS Eliot. He begins to read. Large pieces of the poem is underlined phrases and lines, in the same pencil mark, like a student who hasn't quite grasped the idea of highlighting yet. 

 

He gets to the tenth line, the one about the intimacy of Chopin. And he remembers, and then he's… He still isn't sure, he can't be sure. But he's been looking for a miracle for the past four months. He's terrified to miss it when it comes, terrified it won't come, god help him.

 

_An atmosphere of Juliet's tomb_

_Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid._

 

Juliet's tomb… No. _No_. That couldn't…. Coincidence. Definitely. He'd just missed the book, it had gotten mixed in with his stuff when he moved out of Baker Street, he knew Sherlock had read the poem, knew that he'd owned the book, this is just the same copy, but nothing more than that.

 

_"You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,_

_And how, how rare and strange it is, to find_

_In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,_

_(For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind!_

_How keen you are!)_

 

Definitely not Sherlock. Couldn't be Sherlock. Not with a line like that, Sherlock would never call him keen, think him anything but blind. 

 

And yet. 

 

 

_To find a friend who has these qualities,_

_Who has, and gives_

_Those qualities upon which friendship lives._

_How much it means that I say this to you--_

_Without these friendships--life, what cauchemar!"_

 

He should be trembling, but isn't, and he is sitting down, but his leg feels different, somehow, just for a second, and he cannot let himself have this hope, not for this man who let him down so, so terribly, who he himself let down so terribly. But there had to have been a reason for him to have done it, something Moriarity held over him, something, it couldn't have been as simple as it was, nothing was, he was an idiot but so, so very clever, and this had to be…

 

_"I am always sure that you understand_

_My feelings, always sure that you feel,_

 

It's stupid, a foolish hope, really. 

 

_Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand._

 

Oh god.

 

Sherlock. **Sherlock.** It had to be, no one else could have… No. He has to keep reading, he cannot let himself, not yet.

 

_You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles' heel._

_You will go on, and when you have prevailed_

_You can say: at this point many a one has failed._

 

He keeps reading.

 

_But what have I, but what have I, my friend,_

_To give you, what can you receive from me?_

 

_I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends_

 

_You will see me any morning in the park_

_Reading the comics and the sporting page._

_Particularly I remark An English countess goes upon the stage._

_A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance,_

_Another bank defaulter has confessed._

_I keep my countenance, I remain self-possessed_

 

_Recalling things that other people have desired._

_Are these ideas right or wrong?_

 

_"And so you are going abroad; and when do you return?_

_But that's a useless question._

_You hardly know when you are coming back,_

 

_And I must borrow every changing shape_

_To find expression_

 

_Doubtful, for quite a while_

_Not knowing what to feel or if I understand_

_Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon ..._

 

_This music is successful with a "dying fall"_

 Oh. GOD.

 

_Now that we talk of dying--_

_And should I have the right to smile?_

 

 

He's sitting on the bench, and anyone surveilling him would see at as completely normal, anyone needing to think that Sherlock was dead would see a grieving man reading maudlin poetry in a park and, and all of that is true, that's the beauty of a magic trick. Because few people see except what they want to, and that's the provlem.

 

He's bloody terrified it's a complete coincidence, or something orchestrated by someone with motivations he cannot determine. The convoluted nature of it is just so typically _Sherlock_ , playing the same game Moriarity did, but better, even. 

 

It's what he's had to believe.  But he still cannot let himself, won't allow it, not yet.

 

He takes out his phone, brings up the search function, types in the coordinates scribbled on the page in front of him.

 

41 54N, 12 27E. Written before the title of the poem. **Portrait of a Lady.**

 

He pulls the coordinates upIt takes him another minute to put the pieces together, arrange the phrase in his mind, their private little phrase, their code for "I'm doing something incredibly reckless and stupid, get ready to duck.". Thinks about the times they used it. On it's own it wouldn't be enough, it still shouldn't be, but with everything else… It's enough.

 

And he knows  not to smile, knows enough not to rage and scream with mingled anger and joy because that sentimental idiot, and he still doesn't understand, and he has a feeling he will be waiting a long time before anything happens.

 

But he walks away from that bench for the second time with a lighter step and a tiny fragment of hope.

 

He'll take this miracle, thanks.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you didn't catch the reference at the end, look up the coordinates. It'll makes more sense, trust me.


End file.
